Tiles are widely known and used in bathroom applications, to cover floors, walls or even shower walls. Tiles are usually secured on a surface using glue and cement and grout is used to fill up space between the tiles. In most instances, grout lines are visible between the tiles after the tiles have been installed.
Installing tiles may be relatively expensive, labor intensive and/or time consuming. Accordingly, decorative panels are sometimes provided as an alternative. This type of panels typically comprises a face which lies against the wall of a structure and an opposite decorative face in which a plurality of grooves or recesses are defined to simulate grout lines or other indented patterns or textures.
Different alternatives have been proposed to manufacture indented decorative panels. For instance, US Patent Application No. 2008/0115437 to Bordener discloses an indented panel manufactured using a base panel made of plastic resin in which are created a plurality of indented grid lines using a cutting tool such as a router. U.S. Pat. No. 5,052,160 to Gentsch et al. discloses a similar panel, except that the indented lines are created in the plastic resin using a tubular heater instead of a cutting tool. U.S. Pat. No. 4,169,907 to Barker et al. discloses a panel comprising a hardboard substrate on which a pattern is drawn using ink. A liquid top coat is then applied over the ink and the hardboard substrate. The ink repels the liquid top coat to form “valleys” on the panel. Since the liquid top coat is thinner over the portions of the substrate which are covered in ink, the ink is visible through the top coat.
The manufacturing of most of these panels is relatively expensive, relatively complicated, relatively labor intensive and/or relatively time consuming.
There is therefore a need for an indented decorative panel and for a method for manufacturing such as panel which is relatively inexpensive, relatively easy and relatively fast.
Features of the invention will be apparent from review of the disclosure, drawings and description of the invention below.